Poll of the Day > Why does Youtube always drop to 480p 30 seconds in?

(+) Yeah! (+)

Even if I set it to 1080p at the start.

must be your ISP/internet speed?

It's because they are also simultaneously pushing the "Are you experiencing difficulties" popup, and throttling the bandwidth to push you to buy their premium service. Just get an add on, something like Youtube Enhancer and force it to the desired resolution.

If youtube isn't the active tab it will sometimes drop quality since it thinks you are just "listening"

I've noticed for months now, youtube specifically having all sorts of problems. Like, it'll freeze, drop quality, freeze, repeat.... All the way down to 144p sometimes...and still not load fast enough.
It's sporadic, but pretty frequent.

And it's JUST youtube, not my internet. I've run speed tests to check, I've used other sites simultaneously to compare the experience, and confirmed it was youtube itself, not my internet.

KodyKeir posted...

It's because they are also simultaneously pushing the "Are you experiencing difficulties" popup, and throttling the bandwidth to push you to buy their premium service. Just get an add on, something like Youtube Enhancer and force it to the desired resolution.

Interesting. I care more about the throttling than the quality level. 480p would be fine, hell even 360p is usually enough to read text, which is basically my threshold for video quality.

Gotta make sure they save space for the Crystal clear 4K resolution ads

rexcrk posted...

Crystal clear 4K resolution ads

I stopped watching Youtube on my Roku for exactly this reason; it's struggling to show me a video at 720P (even though it will easily go up to 4K) but then the ad comes on, no stutter, crystal clear, no problem.